When the Going Gets Tough, the Rich Get Going

"Once upon a time a CEO would have fired me for being 15 minutes late for work; but this CEO loses $2.3 billion and won't even resign. And if he ever was fired, he'd walk away with a multi-million-dollar severance package, and he'd pay less in taxes than his former janitor. Welcome to America folks...home of the brave, land of the free. When the going gets tough, the rich get going."

New York Times: "The Federal Reserve is an independent body whose decisions do not have to be ratified by the president or Congress." Then who do they answer to? Does the Federal Reserve Bank (our central bank) rule over us and the politicians as well? That's why I say, "Nationalize the banking industry!"

American citizens who earn less than $30,000 a year have been constantly scolded by the Republicans that "we must take personal responsibility for our actions" when we lose our jobs and our homes. That it's our own fault for not planning better, saving more, and being more prepared. It's our fault for not reading and understanding the fine print written in legalese when signing an ARM loan from a bank. It's our fault for not being more skilled or more mobile when we're laid off after seeing our jobs outsourced to China for cheaper labor.

In 1999 Phil Gramm, a Republican Senator from Texas, who said we were a nation of whiners, introduced a bill to deregulated the banks. After he retired from the Senate 3 years later he went to work for UBS bank as a senior vice-president. A decade later we had the housing crisis and bank failures that the taxpayers had to bail out. Now the Republicans blocked Elizabeth Warren's nomination to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to end banking abuse. And the Republicans are trying to repeal the Frank-Dodd Act as well.

The Republicans must have been very happy with the way the banks have ruined our economy, but the GOP still calls them our "job creators", and doesn't want to regulate them at all! If anything, the GOP wants LESS regulation of the banks! (It's no wonder why I hate Republicans.)

Bank of America (a "job creator") will be laying off another 30,000 employees. Yahoo writes, Why Big Companies Are Axing Jobs: "They are still struggling with constrained profits, new regulations and a tough environment for making money."

Just what EXACTLY are the new regulations that big banks are struggling with to make money fairly, honestly, and legally? I always hear about these draconian regulations, but no one ever mentions EXACTLY what they are.

Add maybe Bank of America's stock fell, but you can bet you ass the CEO and board of directors still get paid. CEO Brian T. Moynihan was paid $10 million this year. After losing money, getting fined for illegal activities, and having a branch office foreclosed on, he didn't get fired, he was rewarded. It's the investors who always get screwed. If the bank's stock goes down, the board of directors just votes themselves another bonus (and pays very little in capital gains taxes too). Corporate governance doesn't exist in this country anymore. They're all thieves. That's why I started a petition to nationalize the banks.

Now recently, UBS Bank CEO Oswald Gruebel (boss of Republican Senator Phil Gramm I mentioned earlier) is under pressure after a rogue trader lost $2.3 billion of the Swiss banking giant's money, but the CEO refuses to resign. Once upon a time a CEO would have fired me for being 15 minutes late for work; but this CEO loses $2.3 billion and won't even resign. And if he ever was fired, he'd walk away with a multi-million-dollar severance package, and he'd pay less in taxes than his former janitor. Welcome to America folks...home of the brave, land of the free. When the going gets tough, the rich get going.

When the Bank of America over-charges us and unfairly forecloses on our homes, that's called "American capitalism". When we wanted to stop taxpayer-paid oil subsidies, the CEO of a major oil company said that was "un-American". When we're taxed to pay for those oil subsidies, that's "patriotic". When we ask to tax millionaires their fair share, that's called "class warfare". The UBS banker won't resign for losing $2.3 billion, but we're told to "take personal responsibility for our actions.

When we are fired from our jobs for the most petty of reasons, these CEOs make sure to deny us unemployment benefits, and we usually always have to fight them all the way through an appeal process. But when a CEO screws up really, really bad (and loses billions of dollars), he gets a pat on the back and a "severance package" worth millions of dollars. That's why CEOs hide behind limited liability clauses in their corporate charters. But we're told to "take personal responsibility for our actions." These are the people that Republicans represent. (It's no wonder why I hate Republicans.)

Oh-oh! Watch out! Stand aside and make room...here come the "job creators" again! > > > New York Times: Worry About a New Wave of Layoffs - "The last workers in the door are often the first out the door. That could make the Americans who have already depleted their support networks and unemployment benefits most vulnerable to layoffs."

The rich CEOs will lay you off from your job to get cheaper labor in China, but then they don't want to pay you unemployment benefits after laying you off, but instead accuse you of being lazy and gaming the system. Nor do they want to pay you for Social Security or Medicare when you get too old or sick to work for them either.

Rich CEOs feel no empathy for poor people like me, just other rich people...like Bill O'Reilly, Paul Ryan, Sean Hannity, Eric Cantor, Glenn Beck, Rick Santorum, Rupert Murdoch, the Koch bothers, Michele Bachmann, Paul Rand, Nikki Haley, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, and the rest of those greedy and hypocritical liars.

And the Republicans are at it again. I've been monitoring the enemy during their presidential debates. Most have proposed a "consumption tax" or a "national sale tax" as part of their "tax reform" packages. The less one earns, the greater percentage of their earnings will go to pay these taxes. It's just another ploy by the Republicans to tax the poor more.

And the Republicans also want to lower (or eliminate entirely) capital gains taxes...those are the taxes that the wealthy pay. How can we ever expect millionaires (Republican candidates) to tax themselves? Greedy POS!

And the Republicans want to "reform" Social Security too. Last year Rick Perry said Social Security was unconstitutional and a Ponzi scheme. But just recently in one presidential debate he said he wanted to reform Social Security. How does somebody "reform" an unconstitutional Ponzi scheme? They are all lying hypocrites. ( It's no wonder why I hate Republicans.)

"I never got a job from a poor person." I hear this all the time from those right-wing loons. But a rich person hasn't hired me in 3 years either. So one would think that a rich person (banker, CEO, hedge fund manger, Charlie Sheen, Paris Hilton, etc.) would be just as useless to me as a poor person. But it was a poor person who saved my life, when the rich people left me for dead. Only their tax revenues can help me now.

Rich people laid off 10 million Americans just since 2008. Rich people sent millions of jobs to China, a country that backed North Vietnam and North Korea in the killing of over 100,000 U.S. soldiers. Rich people busted labor unions to pay us sub-standard wages. Rich people haven't been "job creators" for Americans in the last 40 years, they've created jobs in China and India and elsewhere, just to increase CEO pay 100-fold. Rich people (3% of the population) have hoarded 80% of the wealth and resources of this country.

But I'm not mad at rich people...I only get angry when I see their greed flaunted in my face. Enough is never enough for them. And which political party defends the rich at the expense of the poor? Of the 10 poorest states in the country, most are solidly GOP states. Yet the word "poor" is seldom uttered by the Republican presidential candidates. (It's no wonder why I hate Republicans.)

I live in Las Vegas, a town that epitomizes wealth and excess...I see it all the time; it's all around me. I laugh at the egos of the casino bosses who (like those with penis envy) always have to build bigger and more expensive hotels to out-do their neighbor's. Now the largest of them (MGM) is literally billions of dollars in debt for the albatross called CityCenter and their stock is WAY DOWN; but yet the CEO is still paid $10 million for doing such a great job. (And Las Vegas has the lowest gaming tax in the whole world, but also the highest unemployment rate. Less taxes don't create jobs.)

Too much wealth can be a corrupt and addictive thing, and very dangerous too when the wrong people acquire it. Like power, money tends to corrupt, especially when it's used to subvert our election process.

Who's blaming Obama for being mad at the rich? I'm not. I've known about their ruthless and greedy thirst for wealth and power for the last 40 years. That's why young people are in NYC right now protesting > "OCCUPY WALL STREET". And that's why I say, "Nationalize the banking industry!"

* Support Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) in The Reciprocal Market Access Act
http://economyincrisis.org/solutions/hr1749